‘Crowning Festival of Bai Bureh’

Bai Bureh, a great hero in Sierra Leone, was an important ruler who led an uprising against the British in 1898. He was eventually captured, exiled and later reinstated as a chief by the British. He died in 1906. This lantern was built by Portee Muslim Lantern Club and depicts Bai Bureh being carried in a shaded hammock by four bearers, surrounded by the puppet figures of musicians and debuls operated with strings and rods by puppeteers crouching on the chassis beneath the floor of the lantern.

In Sierra Leone debuls (‘devils’) are human masqueraders who embody and perform the spirits associated with various cult associations (‘societies’). There is no implication that these spirits are evil. Debuls were depicted in puppet form in lanterns purely for entertainment purposes and not as part of any masquerade. The puppet on the left (with a huge black face) depicts gongoli which is a lesser debul whose purpose is purely to entertain people by his comic behaviour. The puppet in the foreground depicts a jollay debul called aguda holding a wicker tray. The jollay society has been described as a social entertainment society particularly for young people.